Expressions aren't only useful for numeric and arithmetic formulas--they can be used for text values too. Text expressions can come in handy when creating keys, getting a user's name or email, and determining the value of other expressions. Here are some of the functions you may find useful when working with text values:

CONCATENATE(text-expression1[,text-expression2]...) combines two or more text values.

CONTAINS(text,keyword) returns TRUE if keyword is found in text.

FIND(fragment,text) returns the position at which fragment first occurs within text, case-sensitive.

INITIALS(name) returns the first letter of each component of name. For example, INITIALS("Bruce Lee") returns "BL".

ISBLANK(expression) tests if expression is empty.

ISNOTBLANK(expression) tests if expression is not empty.

LEFT(text, number) returns the left-most number of characters from text.

LEN(text-expression) returns the length of text-expression.

LOWER(text-expression) returns text-expression in lowercase.

RIGHT(text,number) returns the right-most number of characters from text.

SPLIT(text,separator) returns a list of fragments of text between separator. For example, SPLIT("Red:Yellow:Green", ":") returns a list containing the values Red, Yellow, and Green.

SUBSTITUTE(original-text,text-to-replace,replace-with) returns original-text with all occurrences of text-to-replace replaced with replace-with.